mediocre - Rated 
This was a dissapointment....it was quite a silly and even a childish story.
very poor compared to his previous books.
what was he thinking?
An empty tale - Rated
As an oil trading professional on a business trip, my curisosity was aroused by this book. I was hoping for someone to reflect the true nature of the oil market. Not just its futures exchange facet, but also its physical trading side which is replete with excitement.
Unfortunately, i was sorely disappointed. I fail to see how the world of oil has changed with the opening of the Dubai merc, where less tham a mere couple of thousand lots change hands every day. Dubai is a great city and nation with plenty of opportunities, but this book makes it sound like something earth shattering was done, which is not the case. It was more a case of ho-hum, lets open a new post office.
To make matters worse, as another reviewer pointed out, nothing really happens in the book. Some mild disagreement occurs on the board, some mild threats are made, but everybody is happy in the end. No attempt was made to explore the underpinnings of the market or trading strategies. Rather, we get a childish listing of all the toys people in my industry supposedly play with. Please Mr. Mezrich, can i move to your version of the oil world?
Basically, if you want a colourful description of the trading floor with a few anecdotes thrown in, you would be better off visiting the Nymex floor in person, just dont get there at the opening time described in the book, you'd have to wait an hour! A poor effort overall.
Ugly Americans - The sequel - Rated 
I've become a fan of Ben Mezrichs' because he writes about experiences that you think would only be real in the movie world, that you never even think people would be living it.
I was enraptured as soon as I started reading this book, and was blown away just as much as I had reading the experiences of the other subjects Mr Mezrich had written about.
I thought nothing could get bigger then after reading Ugly Americans, but this book was everything - more! I could see why people would go to Author to tell their stories: because he can truely encapsulate the magic of it all.
If you truely want to escape your life for a few hours and dream: you have to read Ben Mezrich!
Rigged - Rated 
Rigged is another story from Ben Mezrich about some smart American grad done good. The author admits that this is his speciality / rut in the book's intro - but the difference between this one and the others is that it is (not to put too fine a point on it) awful, where previously they've been good fun.
Mezrich's prose has always tended towards the breathless hyperbole, but here he excels himself, creating his own fantasy world where he can namedrop brands like an American Psycho (frankly, it seems BMW may have actually paid for product placement in the book), where all women under motherly age are merely beautiful scenery, where effectively he can play out his fantasies of being one of those lucky few men (for in this world, it is only men) who make it rich young.
Casual sexism aside (which it is at least possible to imagine has roots in trading floor reality), this is not necessarily a problem, as it probably adds interest to an essentially dull tale. But this time around, his wide-eyed fanboy style grates and feels out of place, where in previous books it seemed rather more appropriate. This time the story is basically a teetering pile of stereotypes heavily garnished with drool over the perceived life of the wealthy.
The best bit about this book is the final chapter - not because it's the end, but because it is written by the central character and explains his life a whole lot better than Mezrich did, in a lot more perspective.
But it doesn't redeem the rest of the book. By all means read Breaking Vegas, or Ugly Americans - but skip this one.
Not as good as his other books - Rated 
I was rather disappointed with this book having really enjoyed his previous books, bringing the house down, ugly americans and breaking vegas.
Somehow this book lacked the excitement of the others books which described either guys ripping off casinos or living it large in Japan
This book was about a young former MBA graduate who joined the New York Mercantile Exchange and ended up helping them set up an exchange in Dubai. Not really set of your pants stuff. Yes one member of the board didn't really like the idea but thats about as racy as it gets. To be honest I could not work out what the "Rigged" in the title meant until when the book finishes anticlimatically (yes they opened the exchange in Dubai) when i realised that it was a link to an oil rig.
Buy the others especially Bringing the House Down and Breaking Vegas, they have a lot more energy and excitement
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